Media Consumption: Books - Clam Stomp Edition: George R.R. Martin, Haruki Murakami, Tina Fey,
Originally published at Curious Zoology. You can comment here or there.
Indicated by my previous entry, I was in Oregon last week with very little internet time that didn’t come over my phone, which meant that I actually used my Kindle and got to reading.
First off, I finished A Game of Thrones which I started to read in April so I could be up on it before watching the show, but I failed a bit on that since tonight is the finale. At least I can marathon multiple episodes at a time and then not be left hanging at the end.
Honestly, back in April I only read the first chapter and it really didn’t grab me much, but once I got started again and started to get a sense of the characters, it was hard to put down. I was mostly into the Daenerys chapters, which I think was due to them being completely different than the castle politics that dominated the majority of the book. I know that she’ll be getting involved in all that soon enough, but it was good to get a sense of what was happening outside of high walls.
After reading the giant that is A Game of Thrones, I needed to clear my head a bit (although I did want to know what happens after, so I’ll be getting A Clash of Kings soon enough) and decided on reading Haruki Murakami’s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which is essentially a series of essay like journals about running, writing and aging. I love Murakami’s ficition work, moreso his novels than short stories, and was interested to see how his personal writing comes off.
As someone who has tried to run (still trying, although this last month of activities did take it’s toll on my exercise routine) it was insightful to read someone else’s thoughts and experiences with running considering that I am definitely not anywhere near Murakami’s level. He doesn’t tell the reader that running is the most awesome thing ever and he’s upfront that if you don’t have the desire to run then you won’t have the dedication to run.
All in all, it’s a light book and more of a meandering reflection on his own experiences and life than anything else. A good brain cleanser after heavy fantasy politics.
Even after a nice tidy book on running, I needed a little more light fare before delving into something that had the possibility of being meatier, so I moved on to Tina Fey’s recently published memoir/essay collection: Bossypants.
I enjoyed reading it, but I expected that I would like it more than I did. There were some things that she wrote about that I thought were great, like the story of her honeymoon, the recollection of Amy Pohler’s badassery, The Remembrances of Being Very Very Skinny and a Little Bit Fat. The majority of it was good and I found myself smiling at times and there was nothing in there that I found outright offensive of horrible or unreadable. This was very much a nice little book that took me a few hours to finish and I probably won’t think too much on beyond this review that really tells you nothing about the book.
The next book on my reading frenzy was The Softwire: Virus on Orbis 1. I had no idea about this book because I ended up downloading it awhile ago when it was free in the Kindle store, which I was alerted to by a tweet from Nathan Fillion. I was pleasantly surprised that it turned out to be a solid kids’ sci-fi book that I really enjoyed reading.
There are four books total in this series and I will eventually pick up the other three. From reading some brief reviews on the second one, that it is even better than the first so I’m looking forward visiting Orbis 2 before the end of the year.
Boneshaker was a book I’ve wanted to read since I had heard of it, but I just got around to it this past trip. I had read Priest’s Four and Twenty Blackbirds and really enjoyed. One issue I did have with it that it seemed to drag at parts and that wasn’t as much of an issue in this book. So it’s a steampunk novel that creates an alternate history of civil war era America that also includes zombies. As far as it being a steampunk novel, I have no idea if it’s a good one or not since as far as I can remember, this is the first novel in that genre I have read. Despite the fact that zombies exist in the story, they really don’t play too much of role other than being occasionally scary. She probably could have written the whole thing without the zombies and while there would have been a few plot changes, it wouldn’t change the story.
I enjoyed this one enough to buy/download Clementine, which is sort of sequel in that there are some characters you already know and it’s in the same universe.
The verdict is that I wouldn’t discourage you from reading any of these books and would possibly encourage you to read them even.
